Prof. Dr.

Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Solution of Exercise Sheet 5

Exercise 1 (Memory Management)

1. With which memory management methods do internal fragmentation occur?

 Static partitioning
f Dynamic partitioning
 Buddy memory allocation

2. With which memory management methods do external fragmentation occur?

f Static partitioning
 Dynamic partitioning
 Buddy memory allocation

3. How can external fragmentation be fixed?

By defragmentation. For virtual memory, external fragmentation is irrelevant.

4. Which memory management method searches for the block, which fits best?

f First Fit f Next Fit  Best fit f Random

5. Which memory management concept searches for a free block, starting from
the beginning of the address space?

 First Fit f Next Fit f Best fit f Random

6. Which memory management concept fragments quickly the large area of free
space at the end of the address space?

f First Fit  Next Fit f Best fit f Random

7. Which memory management concept selects random a free and appropriate

block?

f First Fit f Next Fit f Best fit  Random

8. Which memory management concept searches for a free block, starting from
the latest allocation?

f First Fit  Next Fit f Best fit f Random

9. Which memory management concept produces many mini-fragments and is

slow?

f First Fit f Next Fit  Best fit f Random

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 1 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Exercise 2 (Buddy Memory Allocation)

The Buddy method for allocating memory to processes shall be used for a memory
with a capacity of 1024 kB. Perform the provided operations and give the occupancy
state of the memory after each operation.

Exercise 3 (Real Mode and Protected Mode)

1. Describe the functioning of the real mode.

Each process can access the entire memory, which can be addressed.

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 2 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

2. Why is it impossible to use real mode for multitasking operation mode?

It provides no memory protection.

3. Describe the functioning of the protected mode.

Each process can only access its own virtual memory. Virtual memory addres-
ses translates the CPU with the MMU into physical memory addresses.

4. What is virtual memory?

Each process has a separate address space. This address space is an abstracti-
on of the physical memory. It implements virtual memory. It consists of logical
memory addresses, which are numbered from address 0 upwards and it is inde-
pendent from the storage technology used and the existing expansion options.

5. Explain, why virtual memory helps to better utilize the main memory.

Processes do not need to be located in one piece inside the main memory.
Therefore, the external fragmentation of the main memory is not a problem.

6. What is mapping?

The virtual memory is mapped to the physical memory.

7. What is swapping?

The process of relocating data from the main memory to the SDD/HDD and
back.

8. Which component of the CPU is used to implement virtual memory?

Memory Management Unit (MMU).

9. Describe the function of the component from subtask 8.

Virtual memory addresses are translated into physical memory addresses by

the CPU using the MMU.

10. Name a virtual memory concept.

Paging.

11. What sort of fragmentation does occur with the concept of subtask 10?

Internal fragmentation. It can only occur in the last page of each process.

12. What causes a page fault exception to occur?

A process tries to access a page, which is not located in the physical main
memory.

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 3 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

13. What is the reaction of the operating system, when a page fault exception
occurs?

The operating system handles the page fault exception by executing these
steps:

• Allocate the page by using the controller and the device driver on the
swap memory (SSD/HDD).
• Copy the page into a free page of the main memory.
• Update the page table.
• Return control to the process. The process next tries to execute again the
instruction that caused the page fault.

14. What causes an access violation exception or general protection fault exception
to occur?

A process tried to access a virtual memory address, which it is not allowed to

access.

15. What is the consequence (effect) of an access violation exception or general

protection fault exception?

In some legacy Windows operating systems, segmentation faults often caused

system crashes and resulted in a blue screen. In Linux, the signal SIGSEGV is
returned as a result.

16. What contains the kernelspace?

The operating system kernel and kernel extensions (drivers).

17. What contains the userspace?

The currently running process, which is extended with swap memory (Win-
dows: page file).

Exercise 4 (Memory Management)

Please mark for each one of the following statements, whether the statement is true
or false.

1. Real mode is suited for multitasking systems.

f True  False

2. In protected mode, each process is executed in its own copy of the physical
address space, which is protected from other processes.

 True f False

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 4 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

3. When static partitioning is used, internal fragmentation occurs.

 True f False

4. When dynamic partitioning is used, external fragmentation cannot occur.

f True  False

5. With paging, all pages have the same length.

 True f False

6. One advantage of long pages is little internal fragmentation.

f True  False

7. A drawback of short page page table can become huge.

 True f False

8. When paging is used, the MMU translates the logical memory addresses into
physical memory addresses.

 True f False

9. Modern operating systems (for x86) operate in protected mode and use only
paging.

 True f False

Exercise 5 (Page Replacement Strategies)

1. Why is it impossible to implement the optimal replacement strategy OPT?

Because it is not possible to predict the future and therefore the future request
sequence is unknown.

2. Perform the access sequence with the replacement strategies Optimal, LRU,
LFU and FIFO once with a cache with a capacity of 4 pages and once with 5
pages. Also calculate the hit rate and the miss rate for all scenarios.

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 5 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Optimal replacement strategy (OPT):

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 6 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Replacement strategy Least Recently Used (LRU):

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 7 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Replacement strategy Least Frequently Used (LFU):

Replacement strategy FIFO:

3. What is the key message of Laszlo Belady’s anomaly?

FIFO result in worse results for certain access sequences with a bigger memory.

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 8 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

4. Show Belady’s anomaly by performing the access sequence with the replace-
ment strategy FIFO once with a cache with a capacity of 3 pages and once
with 4 pages. Also calculate the hit rate and the miss rate for both scenarios.

Show Belady’s anomaly by performing the access sequence with the replace-
ment strategy FIFO once with a cache with a capacity of 3 pages and once
with 4 pages. Also calculate for both scenarios the hit rate and miss rate.

Exercise 6 (Time-based Command Execution,

Sorting, Environment Variables)

1. Create in your home directory a directory NotImportant and write a cron job,
which erases the content of the directory NotImportant every Tuesday at 1:25
clock am.

The output of the command should be appended to a file EraseLog.txt in

your home directory.

$ mkdir ~/NotImportant
$ crontab -e

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 9 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

Insert these lines:

25 1 * * 2 rm -rfv /home/USERNAME/NotImportant/* >>

/home/USERNAME/EraseLog.txt

2. Write a cron job, which appends a line at a file Datum.txt with the following
format (but with the current values) every 3 minutes between 14:00 to 15:00
clock on every Tuesday in the month of November:

Heute ist der 30.10.2008

Die Uhrzeit ist 09:24:42 Uhr
****************************

$ crontab -e

Insert these lines:

*/3 14,15 * 11 * date+"Heute ist de %x%nDie Uhrzeit ist

%H:%M:%S Uhr%n****************************" >> Datum.txt

3. Write an at-job, which outputs at 17:23 today a list of the running processes.

$ at 1725 today

Insert these lines:

ps -r

4. Write an at-job, which outputs at December 24th at 8:15 am the text „It’s
christmas!“

$ at 0815 DEZ 25

Insert these lines:

echo "It's christmas!"

5. Create in your home directory a file Kanzler.txt with the following content:

Willy Brandt 1969

Angela Merkel 2005
Gerhard Schröder 1998
KurtGeorg Kiesinger 1966
Helmut Kohl 1982
Konrad Adenauer 1949
Helmut Schmidt 1974
Ludwig Erhard 1963

$ echo "Willy Brandt 1969" >> ~/Kanzler.txt

$ echo "Angela Merkel 2005" >> ~/Kanzler.txt
$ echo "Gerhard Schröder 1998" >> ~/Kanzler.txt

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 10 of 11

Prof. Dr. Christian Baun Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering
Operating Systems (WS1920) Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences

$ echo "KurtGeorg Kiesinger 1966" >> ~/Kanzler.txt

$ echo "Helmut Kohl 1982" >> ~/Kanzler.txt
$ echo "Konrad Adenauer 1949" >> ~/Kanzler.txt
$ echo "Helmut Schmidt 1974" >> ~/Kanzler.txt
$ echo "Ludwig Erhard 1963" >> ~/Kanzler.txt

6. Print out the file Kanzler.txt sorted by the first names.

$ sort ~/Kanzler.txt

7. Print out the file Kanzler.txt sorted by the third letter of the last names.

$ sort -k+2.4 ~/Kanzler.txt

8. Print out the file Kanzler.txt sorted by the year of the inauguration.

$ sort -k3 ~/Kanzler.txt

9. Print out the file Kanzler.txt backward reverse sorted by the year of the
inauguration and redirect the output into a file Kanzlerdaten.txt.

$ sort -k3 -nr ~/Kanzler.txt > ~/Kanzlerdaten.txt

10. Create with the command export an environment variable VAR1 and assign it
the value Testvariable.

$ export VAR01=Testvariable

11. Print out the value of VAR1 in the shell.

$ printenv VAR01

12. Erase the environment variable VAR1.

$ unset VAR01

Content: Topics of slide set 5 Page 11 of 11